WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden's name wasn't on the ballot, but history will likely remember Kamala Harris' resounding defeat as his loss too.
As Democrats pick up the pieces following President-elect Donald Trump's decisive victory, some of the vice president's backers are expressing frustration that Biden's decision to seek reelection until this summer — despite longstanding voter concerns about his age and unease about post-pandemic inflation as well as the U.S.-Mexico border — all but sealed his party's loss of the White House.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Harris’ unsuccessful run. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
Biden will leave office after leading the U.S. out of the worst pandemic in a century, galvanizing international support for Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion and passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will impact communities for years to come.
But having run four years ago against Trump to “restore the soul of the country,” Biden will make way after just one term for his immediate predecessor, who overcame two impeachments, a felony conviction and an insurrection launched by his supporters. Trump has vowed to radically reshape the federal government and roll back many of Biden's priorities.
“Maybe in 20 or 30 years, history will remember Biden for some of these achievements,” said Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University. “But in the shorter term, I don’t know he escapes the legacy of being the president who beat Donald Trump only to usher in another Donald Trump administration four years later.”
The president on Wednesday stayed out of sight for the second straight day, making congratulatory calls to Democratic lawmakers who won downballot races as well as one to Trump, who he invited for a White House meeting that the president-elect accepted.
Biden is set to deliver a Rose Garden address Thursday about the election. He issued a statement shortly after Harris delivered her concession speech on Wednesday, praising Harris for running an “historic campaign” under “extraordinary circumstances.”
Some high-ranking Democrats, including three advisers to the Harris campaign, expressed deep frustration with Biden for failing to recognize earlier in the election cycle that he was not up to the challenge. The advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Biden, 81, ended his reelection campaign in July, weeks after an abysmal debate performance sent his party into a spiral and raised questions about whether he still had the mental acuity and stamina to serve as a credible nominee.
But polling long beforehand showed that many Americans worried about his age. Some 77% of Americans said in August 2023 that Biden was too old to be effective for four more years, according to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs.
The president bowed out on July 21 after getting not-so-subtle nudges from Democratic Party powers, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He endorsed Harris and handed over his campaign operation to her.
Harris managed to spur far greater enthusiasm than Biden was generating from the party's base. But she struggled to distinguish how her administration would differ from Biden's.
Appearing on ABC’s “The View” in September, Harris was not able to identify a decision where she would have separated herself from Biden. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris said, giving the Trump campaign a sound bite it replayed through Election Day.
The strategists advising the Harris campaign said the compressed campaign timetable made it even more difficult for Harris to differentiate herself from the president.
Had Biden stepped aside early in the year, they said, it would have given Democrats enough time to hold a primary. Going through the paces of an intraparty contest would have forced Harris or another eventual nominee to more aggressively stake out differences with Biden.
The strategists acknowledged that overcoming broad dissatisfaction among the American electorate about rising costs in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and broad concerns about the U.S. immigration system weighed heavy on the minds of voters in key states.
Still, they said that Biden had left Democrats in an untenable place.
Harris senior adviser David Plouffe in a posting on X called it a “devastating loss." Plouffe didn't assign blame. He noted the Harris campaign “dug out of a deep hole but not enough.”
At the vice president's concession speech on Wednesday, some Harris supporters said they wished the vice president had had more time to make her pitch to American voters.
“I think that would have made a huge difference," said Jerushatalla Pallay, a Howard University student who attended the speech at the center of her campus.
Republicans are poised to control the White House and Senate. Control of the House has yet to be determined.
Matt Bennett, executive vice president at the Democratic-aligned group Third Way, said this moment was the most devastating the party has faced in his lifetime.
"Harris was dealt a really bad hand. Some of it was Biden’s making and some maybe not," said Bennett, who served as an aide to Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. “Would Democrats fare better if Biden had stepped back earlier? I don't know if we can say for certain, but it's a question we'll be asking ourselves for some time.”
Associated Press writer Matt Brown contributed to this report.
FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris listens as President Joe Biden speaks about distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, in the East Room of the White House, May 17, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Soldiers in a Ukrainian artillery battery on the front lines in the country’s east were only vaguely aware Wednesday of American election results pointing to Donald Trump’s victory. But they were firm in their hopes for the next president of the United States.
Their entrenched artillery battery fires on Russian forces daily — and takes fire nearly as often. Just the other day, one of their overhead nets snared a Russian drone.
“I hope that the quantity of weapons, the quantity of guns for our victory will increase,” the unit's 39-year-old commander, who goes by the name Mozart, said in the hours before Trump’s win was confirmed. “We don't care who the president is, as long as they don't cut us off from help, because we need it.”
The soldiers, who use their Starlink connection to the internet sparingly, learned of the U.S. election results from Associated Press journalists.
Trump's election throws into doubt American support for Ukraine — and ultimately whether Kyiv can beat back Russia's invasion. But Mozart — who like other soldiers Wednesday did not give his name in keeping with Ukrainian military protocol — is among many Ukrainians who hope that Trump will hold the line on American support for their country. Russian forces have recently made gains in the east, although the commander described the front-line situation as “static.”
Yurii Fedorenko, commander of a Ukrainian drone unit also in the Kharkiv region, wears an American flag patch on his uniform. He is keenly aware of how critical American support has been for Ukraine.
“Suppose I were told that there was some country across the ocean that I didn’t even know where it was, and that I had to pay money from my taxes to this country so that it could exist," said Fedorenko, whose call-sign is Achilles — the same name as his battalion. “I don’t know how I would react. Therefore, I really thank the Americans and I really believe that they have a good education system, because the vast majority of people understand why the United States helps third countries, and in particular now Ukraine.”
It was under Trump that the United States first sent weapons to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, in 2017. Those Javelin anti-tank missiles were crucial to Ukraine's ability to fend off the full-scale invasion in 2022. But Trump overall is wary of U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts.
Trump, who has touted his good relationship with President Vladimir Putin and called the Russian leader “pretty smart” for invading Ukraine, has repeatedly criticized American backing of Ukraine. He characterized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “the greatest salesman on Earth” for winning U.S. aid.
Zelenskyy was among the first world leaders to publicly congratulate Trump, and said the two discussed how to end “Russian aggression against Ukraine” when they met in September.
“I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs. This is exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer. I am hopeful that we will put it into action together,” he wrote on the social platform X.
Zelenskyy later wrote that he had spoken to Trump and congratulated him on “his historic landslide victory — his tremendous campaign made this result possible. I praised his family and team for their great work. We agreed to maintain close dialogue and advance our cooperation.”
Trump has said repeatedly he would have a peace deal done between Ukraine and Russia within a day if elected, although he has not said how. During his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he twice refused to directly answer a question about whether he wanted Ukraine to win — raising concerns that Kyiv would be forced to accept unfavorable terms in any negotiations he oversaw.
In Kyiv, which comes under attack from Russian drones near daily, 18-year-old Viktoriia Zubrytska was pragmatic about her expectations for the next American president. She thinks Ukraine will be forced to give up territory in exchange for peace under a Trump presidency. But she said she preferred that to what she called the false hope that the Biden administration offered.
“We will live in a world of facts where we will be certain what awaits us,” said the law student. “Certainty and objective truth is much better than lies and life in illusions.”
According to VoteCast, 74% of voters who supported Harris favored continuing aid to Ukraine, while only 36% of Trump’s voters did. AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago.
On the front lines in Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region, Andriy, who goes by “Rodych” or “Relative,” said Ukraine would "come up with something" no matter what happened in the U.S. vote.
“We are a shield between Europe and Russia,” he added. “Other countries do not understand what is happening here, they see it on TV and for them it is far away.”
America's NATO allies were closely watching the election. France and Germany arranged a last-minute, top-level defense meeting Wednesday in Paris to discuss the results, and Ukraine is likely to be central to the meeting. The two leading powers in the European Union provide significant support to Ukraine to defend it against Russia’s war.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, citing a “more aggressive Russia,” also invoked Trump's motto of “peace through strength.”
Rutte praised Trump for his work during his first term to persuade countries in the alliance to ramp up defense spending.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had no information on whether Putin plans to congratulate Trump, but he emphasized that Moscow views the U.S. as an “unfriendly” country. Peskov reaffirmed the Kremlin’s claim that U.S. support for Ukraine amounted to involvement in the conflict, telling reporters: “Let’s not forget that we are talking about the unfriendly country that is both directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state.”
Still, he noted Trump's promise to end the war swiftly once elected.
“The U.S. can help end the conflict,” Peskov said, adding that “it certainly can’t be done overnight."
In a rare agreement with the Kremlin, Fiona Hill, a former intelligence expert in the George W. Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, said it was increasingly clear that Europe had to step up its capacities.
“If Trump is saying, I’m going to sit down and resolve this in 24 hours, it’s highly unlikely that’s going to be the case,” Hill said in a podcast with the European Council on Foreign Relations a few days ahead of the election. “You can say the United States is going to stop supplying weapons, and you can hold everything out for leverage, but it’s not for the United States to do at this particular point. Because there are already other Europeans in the game in terms of assistance to the Ukraine.”
Konovalov reported from the Kharkiv region. Associated Press journalists Lorne Cook in Brussels; Hanna Arhirova, Illia Novikov and Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine; Danica Kirka in London; Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
A serviceman, known by the call sign Yaga, of the 13th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine looks on at his position on the front line near Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
A serviceman of the 13th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine prepares to fire a Giatsint-B gun towards Russian positions near Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
A serviceman of the 13th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine prepares to fire a Giatsint-B gun towards Russian positions near Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
A serviceman of the 13th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine fires a Giatsint-B gun towards Russian positions near Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
A serviceman of the 13th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine fires Giatsint-B gun towards Russian positions near Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump departs as son Barron Trump, left, and former first lady Melania Trump look on at an election night watch party, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
FILE - Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, right, and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shake hands during their meeting at Trump Tower, on Sept. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
